homies VS Home Manager using Nix

This is awesome! I utilize `nix` on Linux and Mac but I haven't "drank the kool-aid" so I utilize `nix profile` and a makefile:

https://github.com/sontek/homies/blob/master/justfile

Fleek basically replaces my hacked together work flow with something that I'd actually utilize on a daily basis! Nix shouldn't be an all or nothing thing and this is one step closer to making it a generally available set of technology.

I see a lot of people mentioning home-manager / nix in the comments. I tried drinking the nix kool-aid and home-manager and all that was a little too much more me and landed on a hybrid approach:

https://github.com/sontek/homies

1. I use a `justfile` that calls `nix profile install ...` to install my packages, rather than using a nix configuration file. This allows me to use a standard package manager workflow rather than going "all in".

https://github.com/sontek/homies/blob/master/justfile#L24-L2...

2. I then use GNU Stow to install my dotfile configuration:

https://github.com/sontek/homies/blob/master/justfile#L93-L9...

I think this is a great middle ground where I can utilize `nix` as my package manager across Linux and Mac and have consistency while not having to learn the whole configuration language or change my workflow.

The other tools I use heavily in my environment:

- https://asdf-vm.com/: I find this better than installing python/node/etc from nix.

- https://github.com/casey/just: I use this as my command runner (similar to make but cleaner in my opinion)

Yeah, I think its things like this that make it hard to adopt nix. All I want is a way to say "I want jq, kubectl, and terraform installed" and have it available globally. Not for specific projects or anything like that.

Right now I maintain a makefile that installs everything for me using `nix profile`:

https://github.com/sontek/homies/blob/master/justfile#L14-L2...

Which almost exactly like I want. Only issue is sometimes a new hash is generated (which I don't understand.. maybe a config update in the repos?) and the makefile can't run anymore:

    error: packages '/nix/store/y65pp5hipid0fzxl1z7xjxdk4h9jwfw7-exa-0.10.1/bin/exa' and '/nix/store/gy0bqcs9mcan8af47wakdylhal67dpy4-exa-0.10.1/bin/exa' have the same priority 5; use 'nix-env --set-flag priority NUMBER INSTALLED_PKGNAME' to change the priority of one of the conflicting packages (0 being the highest priority)

It's probably overkill for what you are trying to do. But I have been using home-manager [0] as a way to quickly restore my working environment.

[0] https://nix-community.github.io/home-manager/

$ home-manager --version 23.05 $ nix-channel --add https://github.com/nix-community/home-manager/archive/release-23.11.tar.gz home-manager $ nix-channel --update $ nix-shell '' -A install [...] All done! The home-manager tool should now be installed and you can edit /home/MY-USERNAME/.config/home-manager/home.nix to configure Home Manager. Run 'man home-configuration.nix' to see all available options. $ home-manager --version 23.05

Unfortunately until we find more volunteers in this area, it is hard to see status quo changing. See also https://github.com/nix-community/home-manager/issues/607 and this ongoing project https://github.com/pjones/plasma-manager

> Channels are, AFAIU, a reference to some point-in-time/commit/version of nixpkgs

It's not specifically nixpkgs, but any Nix code generally.

Per the Nix manual[0]:

> Channels are a mechanism for referencing remote Nix expressions and conveniently retrieving their latest version.

e.g. home-manager's suggested channel is just the github tarball for the relevant branch[1]:

  nix-channel --add https://github.com/nix-community/home-manager/archive/master.tar.gz home-manager

It sounds like you'd benefit a lot from Nix/NixOS [1], if not just home-manager[2].

1. https://nixos.org/

2. https://github.com/nix-community/home-manager

nix-channel --add https://github.com/nix-community/home-manager/archive/master.tar.gz home-manager nix-channel --update nix-shell '' -A install

I'm using flakes and home manager and not really sure how to go about managing my neovim configuration. I've read through some other posts, github issues, and various articles trying to suss out a good way to do this. Reading through other people's configs and posts was somewhat helpful but there is a lot going on I don't understand and everyone's examples I've seen vary wildly.

Said store path contains the home-manager repo. After the home-manager run, the store path is recreated.

I can't answer all your questions, but home-manager does have a dconf module that would probably be better to use than that external tool. Everything inside the options block are the things you can pass to the dconf module.